Читать книгу A Class-Book of New Testament History онлайн

151 страница из 159

THIS ferocious action was one of the last crimes in the bloodthirsty career of this guilty monarch. Very shortly afterwards he died under circumstances already related210 at Jericho A.U.C750. This event was made known to Joseph by an Angel in a dream (Mtt. ii.19), and he was bidden to arise and return with the young Child and His mother into the land of Israel. Accordingly he set out, but hearing that the tyrant’s son Archelaus211, who enjoyed a reputation worthy of his father, was reigning in his stead, he was afraid to continue his journey, and was only encouraged to proceed by another supernatural intimation. The place whither he was to go had not before been distinctly specified, and he might have supposed that Bethlehem, the city of David, was the proper place to rear the Son of David, so near to Jerusalem, the most religious, the most sacred part of Palestine212. But now he was directed to repair to the safer obscurity of his former residence in Galilee, and accordingly went down from the highlands of Judæa to Nazareth, and there the Holy Child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him (Lk. ii.40).